Glossary

From DCMI_MediaWiki

DCMI Glossary

About this glossary

"Archaic" concepts, models, and terminology

Products of their time which, though not wrong or superseded, have faded in use.

"Legacy" concepts, models, and terminology

Products of their time that are now considered inferior to current alternatives. While their adoption in new implementations is discouraged, maintainers of legacy implementations may judge that they work well enough for their purposes to continue using.

"Superseded" concepts, models, and terminology

Products of their time now considered to be obsolete or counterproductive to implement.

"Ambiguous"

Have one or more meanings as typically discussed in a related essay.

Glossary

The DCMI Abstract Model (DCAM) [1] is a specification which defines an abstract syntax for metadata records that is independent of, but mappable to, a diversity of concrete implementation syntaxes such as HTML/XHTML, XML, and any of the concrete syntaxes defined for RDF. The DCAM was developed as a basis for defining validatable metadata records, in a variety of popular implementation syntaxes, whose contents could straightforwardly be exposed as RDF triples.

Appropriate Literal (archaic)

In the late 1990s, when work began on the Resource Description Framework, the notion was introduced that resolvable URIs should be used as metadata values. The notion of "appropriate literal" captured the requirement to present consumers of metadata not just with URIs, but with readable text strings or other appropriate literals, such as dates or classification numbers, for the purpose of resource discovery. The ambiguity of whether Dublin Core properties were intended to be used with strings or URIs as values was not properly addressed until the assignment of domains and ranges in 2008.

The Dublin Core Abstract Model (DCAM) specifies the components and constructs used in Description Sets (metadata records). DCAM provides an information model independent of any particular encoding syntax and a clear mapping to RDF triples. It is designed to be used in conjunction with the Description Set Profile constraint language and DCAM-conformant syntax specifications in the construction of application profiles. Developed between 2003 and 2008, DCAM was in 2010 the subject of a critical review. DCAM and related specifications are not currently the object of further development and testing.

DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative) Ltd

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is a public, not-for-profit organization, incorporated in Singapore, with a mission to develop interoperable metadata standards for a broad range of purposes and business models. DCMI is hosted by the National Library Board of Singapore and supported by institutional members and sponsors. From its start in 1995 with a workshop at OCLC in Dublin, Ohio, through incorporation in Singapore in 2009, the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative was managed as an activitiy within OCLC's Office of Research. DCMI publishes metadata specifications, holds annual conferences, and hosts numerous discussion forums.

The RDF Properties, Classes, Vocabulary Encoding Schemes, and Datatypes declared and maintained by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative are collectively referred to as DCMI Metadata Terms. Of the four types of terms, Properties, Classes, and Datatypes (Syntax Encoding Scheme) are defined exactly as in RDF. The notion of a Vocabulary Encoding Scheme is unique to DCMI, though it is similar to -- arguably, formally indistinguishable from -- the notion of a Concept Scheme in Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS).

As defined in the Dublin Core Qualifiers publication of July 2000, a qualifier was a term used to specify a narrower meaning for an element (element refinement) or to provide context to a value associated with an element (encoding scheme). Over time, the blanket term qualifier fell into disuse in favor of element refinement or encoding scheme, and the term is now considered archaic. For a fuller explanation see the glossary entry about DCMI Metadata Terms.